This week we had a guest, Ms Madeline, a current staff of
Taylor’s University to talks to us about her experience on Socialisation in the
workplace. Socialisation or assimilation refers to the process of becoming part
of a culture. There are 3 stages, one, anticipatory socialisation is
socialisation that occurs before entering into the organisation, two, encounter
is the sensemaking stage that occurs when a new employee enter the
organisation, old values should be let go and adapt into the expectation of the
new company, three, Metamorphosis is the state reached at the completion of the
socialization process where the new employee is now accepted as an
organisational insider. Next, we learnt about the communication processes that
occur during socialisation which involves the employment interview during the
anticipatory socialization phase. Then moving into information seeking during the
encounter phase and the LMX (Leader-Member Exchange Theory) modal of role
development. Finally, it is also important to consider on the organisational
exit and disengagement.
During tutorial, we were ask to come up with a role play on
a mock employment interviewing with the use of assimilation processes such as
recruiting and screening, information-gathering tool and tool for socialization
as well as an experience we had while working with a company that role plays
the three stages of socialization. The company that my group chose to role play
was Edelman where the interviewee is applying a job as a PR consultant.
This week lecture introduced the Karl Marx’s Legacy where he
argues that certain societal structures and processes lead to power imbalances
which may further lead to alienation and oppression for certain social groups.
The ultimate goal for critical theorists is to uncover the imbalances and
create awareness for the oppressed group which then allows the possibility of emancipation,
to liberate the oppressed group either through direct political action, individual
resistance or awareness. To further understand critical approach, we were
taught on ideology and hegemony. Ideology refers to the taken-for-granted
assumptions about reality that influence perception of situations and events.
It is not just a believe but ideology is what shapes our understanding and
controls our interpretation of reality. Ideologies are rarely questioned and it
can influence behaviours, it is related to the ways which are used to justify
and legitimize actions. Ideology is tied to systems of power and domination
which leads to hegemony.
Hegemony concept is developed by Gramsci and it describes
about the way a dominant group rules over another group to accept subordination
as the norm, not just to accept but also to actively participate and adopt in
the process. This lecture also
introduces two theories, concertive control theory and feminist theories. Concertive
control theory explains how power relationships can be transformed in an era of
team-based and alternative form organisations while feminist theories talks
about the different feminist perspectives such as liberal, radical, standpoint,
postmodern and pluralist.
In Tutorials this week, my group were asked to develop innovative
ideas for improving the communication and organisations (CNO) course. The most
popular idea that will be generated by votes in class will be institute as
class policy for the following semester of CNO. After brainstorming ideas
through BB7, Julian, the presenter of the week from our group concluded with 4
reasonable ideas for the new class policy. One was to scrap readings, class
presentation and online discussion to make way for critical analysis of movies
or TV screening with organizational communication theories. Some movies like ‘Devil
Wears Prada’ can explain on the manager-subordinate relationship, ‘The West
Wing’ can help us understand on critical approaches and ‘500 Days of Summer’
gives a better understanding on flat organisation. Idea two was to go on a field
trip that will replace one or two days of our tutorial classes. The field trips
allows us to observe different organisational communication behaviour for
example field trip to chocolate factory can provide a visual aid to the
understanding of machine metaphor, police training centre can explain on how classical
approach works and visit to a multinational cooperation will aid a better
understanding on organisational diversity. The third idea was to have
interactive in-class sessions such as role-playing, games, pop-quiz with
prizes! We love incentives such as extra bonus marks for assignments, a
get-away pass for being late, free meal and etc. The last idea was to incorporate
research paper assignment two with our internship requirement. Students are to
attend internship few weeks earlier for time to conduct CNO research for
assignment two. The research report will only be required to hand in at the end
of internship period. The idea for this is for the convenience of student to
get permission from the company for research. At the end of the day, all
students voted field trip as the preferred choice for implementation into CNO
subject next semester because as a communication degree student in Taylor’s, we
often only required to write, write and write. We rarely organize trips to go
out of classes to see, learn and touch for a better understanding of our
subjects.
